On 13 April 2018, with support from the Netherlands General Intelligence and Security Service and UK counterparts, the Netherlands Defence Intelligence and Security Service (DISS) disrupted a cyber operation being carried out by a Russian military intelligence (GRU) team. The Russian operation had targeted the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague.(...)

305 Car Registrations May Point to Massive GRU Security BreachOctober 4, 2018 By Bellingcat Investigation TeamIn an unprecedented step, the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) and the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Justice on October 4, 2018 disclosed the identities under which four Russian individuals, believed to be officers of the cyber-warfare division of the Russia’s Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces (GRU). The four individuals travelled to the Netherlands in April 2018 in an attempt to hack into the computer network of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), based in The Hague. These four men travelled under diplomatic passports, two of which had consecutive issue numbers.

Following this disclosure, Bellingcat and its Russian investigative partner, The Insider, attempted to verify that the identities disclosed by the Dutch authorities were in fact the authentic identities of the persons involved. Comparing data from different databases dated 2002 to 2014, Bellingcat was able to confirm that these identities are indeed real, as opposed to cover personas, which is the case with the two GRU officers involved in the Skripal poisoning case.(...)

An ongoing Bellingcat investigation conducted jointly with The Insider Russia has confirmed through uncovered passport data that the two Russian nationals identified by UK authorities as prime suspects in the Novichok poisonings on British soil are linked to Russian security services. This finding directly contradicts claims by the Russian president on 12 September 2018, and by the two men in an interview broadcast on RT one day later, that they are civilians who traveled to Salisbury for a tourist getaway.(...)

(...)Since the publication of the first part of this investigation, other media have followed suit with obtaining access to, and disclosing the passport file of “Ruslan Boshirov” – the second suspect in the Skripals poisoning. The leaked passport file extracts similarly displayed characteristics atypical of a civilian person’ passport. Bellingcat can confirm the authenticity of the leaked passport file of “Boshirov”, and that it contains all three markings that helped identify “Petrov” as a security-service asset: “Top Secret” annotations, a blank biographical page referring to a secret attached letter, a “do not provide information” stamp, and issuing authority unit 777001, exclusively used for state VIPs and intelligence officers. In addition, “Boshirov” also has no recorded history prior to the issuance of his domestic ID passport in 2010 (2009 in “Petrov”’s case)(...)

‘Yeah it's the GRU HQ — so what?’ Funny passport numbers link a whole web of suspected Russian intelligence operatives(...)Using the passport information published by Bellingcat and The Insider, the St.-Petersburg-based news website Fontanka searched various databases for people whose passports were likely issued by the same branch of Russia’s Federal Migration Service, both before and after Petrov and Boshirov received their documents. On September 22, Fontanka published the results of its study, revealing that some of these individuals indicated on different documents that their home address was 76B Khoroshevskoe Highway, which is located just around the corner from the GRU’s Moscow headquarters.

According to Fontanka, the building at 76B Khoroshevskoe Highway belongs directly to the GRU, while Russia’s Unified State Registrar of Legal Entities says it’s home to several military units, including Branch Number 45807, whose commanding officer is Igor Korobov, the head of the GRU. According to federal law, Russian soldiers can register their documents at the address of their military unit.(...)

Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Mr Wallace said that "ultimately, of course" the Russian president was behind the poisoning.(...)UK officials will on Thursday brief the UN Security Council on two men suspected of carrying out the attack.

Prosecutors say there is evidence to charge the pair, who the prime minister said are thought to be officers from Russia's military intelligence service the GRU.(...)She said the poisoning was "not a rogue operation" and was "almost certainly" approved at a senior level of the Russian state.

Autor: Merowig

Navy Reestablishes U.S. 2nd Fleet to Face Russian Threat; Plan Calls for 250 Person Command in Norfolk(...)Faced with a more active Russian fleet and increasing military competition across the world, the Navy has elected to reestablish U.S. 2nd Fleet to manage assets closer to the homeland, according to a memo announcing the command obtained by USNI News.(...)The U.S. Department of Defense announced today that it has officially offered to host the proposed NATO Joint Force Command for the Atlantic at its naval facilities in Norfolk, Virginia.

The new JFC-Norfolk will ensure that NATO can successfully conduct operations across the full spectrum of Alliance missions in the trans-Atlantic region in the northern Atlantic.(...)

Autor: Merowig

FROM MOSCOW WITH MURDER: RUSSIA HUNTING DEFECTORS IN AMERICA?(...)Some U.S. security sources say there has been an uptick in Russian activity here over the past two years. Suspected Russian agents have been spotted cruising the neighborhoods of some defectors protected by CIA security teams, they say. The FBI and CIA have been ”bringing people out of retirement, people who worked against the Russians in the 1990s,” to cope with the the challenge, the defector said, speaking anonymously out of fears for his personal safety.(...)Likewise last year in Washington, D.C. police officially concluded that Putin’s former media chief, Mikhail Lesin, died of blunt-force injuries to the head, neck, and torso from falls during a in November 2015 drinking binge. But “everyone thinks he was whacked and that Putin or the Kremlin were behind it,” an FBI agent recently told Buzzfeed. In February, the news site also surfaced evidence implicating Russia “in 14 suspicious deaths on British soil that the U.K. government had largely ignored.”(...)

Autor: Merowig

The Russian ambassadors to Poland and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have been summoned to meetings at those countries' foreign ministries, Russian news agencies report.(...)Meanwhile, several media outlets are reporting that U.S. President Donald Trump could be on the verge of expelling at least 20 Russian diplomats.(...)

Nikolai Glushkov: Russian exile murdered at London home by 'compression to neck', police sayCounter-terror police say there is no evidence of a link with nerve agent attack on Sergei Skripal An exiled Russian businessman associated with a leading critic of Vladimir Putin was murdered at his London home just over a week after a nerve agent attack on a former spy, police have revealed.(...)

Russian bombers simulated an attack against this radar on Norway's Barents Sea coastDirector of the Norwegian Intelligence Service discloses information about Russian offensive exercises against targets in northern Norway.(...)